Speeches by Hatton.

“When will that work conclude? The covid pandemic was a few winters ago now.”

“Going through the NAO Report, it is interesting to see that it has been quite difficult to judge the impact of support schemes for energy. With that in mind, and building on what Anna said, could you touch a bit more on what has been learned about the energy support schemes that were in place during the covid pandemic,…”

“This year?”

“If we look at the world picture at the moment, there are a number of reasons that we could see further instability in the cost of energy; there could be similar events to what happened with the pandemic or with conflicts in Europe. It is reassuring to hear that this will be concluded by the summer, but, with that in mi…”

“To go into more detail, if possible, when you look at some of the challenges we face—whether that is a conflict around tariffs, further instability in Europe or further conflict in the middle east—do you feel confident the Department is ready for the potential knock-on impacts in terms of energy, and therefore the pric…”

“I am glad the work is concluding this year but, to get this clear for the Committee, if the work around whether the previous energy support schemes have been successful does not conclude until this summer, how can the Department be fully confident that it is prepared to offer support in the event of another spike cause…”

“Moving on from that important line of questioning, I think it is important that this Committee reflects on areas where a Report highlights good work, and where we have seen success. It is clear from the Report that the levels of fraud and error across energy support schemes were low, and lower, perhaps, than elsewhere …”

“Particularly during the pandemic, we saw much higher levels of fraud in other areas, such as the bounce back loan scheme. As you said, it is important that work is going on to ensure that we do not repeat the mistakes that we saw with that scheme. My final point is that we saw slightly higher levels of fraud where ther…”

“T7. Today we learned not only that Yevgeny Prigozhin, a sanctioned warlord, used frozen funds to make legal threats to silence a British journalist, but that the enablers of this textbook example of lawfare have since gone unpunished, with the Solicitors Regulation Authority ruling that Prigozhin’s lawyers “broke no ru…”

“I couldn’t possibly.”

“Thank you, Mr Blackman. I am sure members of the Committee have read the suggested substantive motion, and can see that I hope with this debate to cover a range of important topics relating to political finance in our democracy. It touches on the opaque funding of political parties, where it is not clear who the donor …”

“I think that would be fine. We could certainly broaden it to include that. It is about not either/or, but both. I completely agree.”

“I will take that away, but I am sure it would be absolutely fine. I am completely fine with the title. The motion does the talking about what we are debating, so the title is not by any means important.”

“Thank you. I should stress that I am a member of the APPG on anti-corruption and responsible tax, and their support has been invaluable. They have helped with previous applications on SLAPPS, for example, and they certainly help to set out issues in a clear and informed way.”

“I would just be interested to know where it is—”

“I suppose this goes back to where I started, which is that there is a grey area and it is not always easy to see whether the funding is reaching the right pupils, or whether in some cases there is actually a real‑term erosion. It is not always clear whether a school is putting forward a plan in an informed way. You are…”

“It is quite shocking if almost one in three schools is not.”

“To build on the points the Chair made, you said, Susan, that 70% of schools were directly using an evidence base in their plans for how they spend pupil premium funding. Was that what you were saying?”

“You spoke earlier about shining a spotlight on good practice and trying to roll that out, particularly at a regional level. Do you think every school leader has a clear understanding of what the pupil premium should and should not be spent on? Does it always provide good value for money?”

“It was rightly reflected upon earlier that schools and teachers like to have flexibility and freedom about how they use funding associated with supporting disadvantaged children. Last year the Sutton Trust found that 47% of senior school leaders use pupil premium funding to fill wider gaps in their budgets, which is so…”